Agricultural production in the developing world could get a boost from precision agriculture and Big Data techniques, said agribusiness executives at the World Food Prize conference in Des Moines according to DTN. Information gleaned from Big Data’s detailed collection of crop production across a field can tailor seed, fertilizer and pesticide application rates to maximize yields while controlling production costs.
The chief executive of Climate Corp, Michael Stern, said the cost of gathering and storing datasets is declining. “Cell phone use in developing countries will really be key to data transfer in the early days,” said Stern.
An executive at Deere and Co, the world’s largest farm equipment company, said he believes the use of precision agriculture tools will rise rapidly in the next five years. “The ability to take that into developing markets is extremely important,” said the Deere executive, Cory Reed. DTN quoted the director of global market access for Elanco, the agricultural drug company, as saying the expansion of data collection and analysis would be accompanied by concerns among farmers about keeping their information confidential. “Data privacy is going to be a big social discussion we have to have,” said Jose Simas of Elanco.